The eternal generality

I was born tired — but with the quality of mother wit, the gift of women like Gloria — to that, for all my talking and listening, my waiting in vain for the eternal generality that seems to lie just beyond every argument and every speculation, to that I have added not one jot.

F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Beautiful and Damned (1922)

Taking the easier route, eternally adjustable generalities appear to be what educated midwits are after. Leak-proof simplifications midwittingly imbibed with their education. All of which is yet another generalisation, but fortunately not an eternal one. I hope not anyway.

Another aspect of eternally adjustably generalities is that they allow us to be superstitious without being traditionally superstitious. They facilitate secular mystique and the hunger for socially agreeable simplification. Without this, traditional political parties would go nowhere, which unfortunately for us is the only suitable place for them.